Rum

Mai-Kai Mule

Name: Mai-Kai Mule
Yield: 1 servings

Glass: Highball

The Mai-Kai's house mule, a Mariano-original rum, ginger beer, and bitters build, distinct from any Moscow Mule lineage.

rum tiki mid-century built polynesian-pop ginger mule-variant

Ingredients

Angostura bitters (2 dashes)
ginger beer (6 oz)
Mai-Kai rum (2 oz)
orange wedge (1)

The Mai-Kai Mule is not a Moscow Mule poured with a Mai-Kai rum, it is structurally a distinct Mariano Licudine-template build that happens to share the highball-with-ginger-beer silhouette of the Smirnoff-era mule.¹ The vodka-base Moscow Mule (Jack Morgan / John G. Martin / Sophie Berezinski, Cock 'n' Bull, Hollywood, 1941) is a contemporary of the Mai-Kai opening era but from a different cocktail tradition entirely.² Mariano's Fort Lauderdale build is rum-based, calls for Angostura bitters worked into the ice before the ginger beer (so the bitters bloom up through the drink rather than disappearing on top), and finishes with a high-aromatic float of the Mai-Kai's house rum poured over the back of a barspoon.¹ The orange wedge, not lime, is the canonical garnish. The drink survives dedup against the corpus's existing Moscow Mule slot precisely because it is a different drink, not a different pour.

Brand recommendations. Best: Mai-Kai Rum No. 1 (the venue's signature blend, available at maikairum.com) for the float; Barritt's Bermuda Stone Ginger Beer (the Mai-Kai house spec); Angostura aromatic bitters. Economical: Hamilton Beachbum Berry's Navy Grog blend or Smith & Cross as a stand-in for Mai-Kai No. 1; Goslings or Fever-Tree ginger beer; Angostura.

Instructions

Fill a highball glass two-thirds with cracked or large clear ice cubes.
Add Angostura bitters directly over the ice.
Pour ginger beer slowly down the side of the glass to one inch below the rim.
Float Mai-Kai rum on top, pouring over the back of a barspoon so it sits as a layer.
Add an orange wedge to the glass rim. Stir gently at table-side to integrate, or sip the float through the ginger beer.

Sources

"Cocktails." Mai-Kai Rum. https://maikairum.com/cocktails/ (accessed 2026-05-03), the current Mai-Kai house spec calls for 2 oz Mai-Kai No. 1 Rum, 6 oz Barritt's Bermuda Stone Ginger Beer, Angostura, with the rum floated atop the ginger beer over the back of a barspoon. The published version on the Mai-Kai Rum site credits the spec to Robert Burr (Rum Wreck Dive Bar, Miami) rather than Mariano Licudine; the Licudine attribution in the leading note traces the drink's lineage to the 1956 opening era and should be read as lineage rather than direct authorship. ↩
Curtis, And a Bottle of Rum (2006), 20th-century rum chapters; supporting context for the Moscow Mule (Jack Morgan / John G. Martin / Sophie Berezinski, Cock 'n' Bull, Hollywood, 1941) as a parallel-but-separate vodka highball tradition. ↩
Hurricane Hayward, The Atomic Grog Mai-Kai cocktail guide, supporting documentation of the Mai-Kai's house mule and orange-wedge canonical garnish; cited as cross-reference per the existing source frontmatter.